Yes, but in addition to that are impact fees for development. That's specifically designed to cover the build up of additional infrastructure necessary to support the buildings being added. But there are loopholes that developers like to use to avoid them, and cities willing to look the other way. I don't blame the developers for wanting to avoid the fees, that's just good business sense.

I do blame the city for being willing to look the other way and enabling it.

In theory, more development = more property taxes. But reading the OP's post, it sounded like the developer was avoiding those taxes.

It's fairly common for big developers to get temporary tax abatements for developing big projects. I have seen "temporary" over 10 years, and I wouldn't be surprised to learn that sometimes it goes beyond 20.

The OP mentioned Seattle, which apparently has a boilerplate 12-year tax abatement for multi-family developments: https://clarknuber.com/seattles-multifamily-property-tax-exe...

12 years is a long time to underfund municipal services in an area.

That’s the problem. Housing geared toward young families tend to have a lot of school age children and they tend to create higher school costs than they pay in taxes.

A lot of Communities charge "impact fees" as a bit of a pre-tax so that they can extend infrastructure as necessary to support development projects. Of course a lot of municipalities will just mismanage and spend it on other things.